Spice Invaders

Courtesy of w3.virgin.com Arizona Daily Wildcat Geri Halliwell, Melanie Brown, Emma Bunton, Melanie Chisholm and Victoria Aadams

Don't be surprised to hear your local weatherman issue a severe Spice Girls warning. Yes, they are coming. No, they can't be stopped. Lock your doors, bar your windows; it won't do any good. Like any monstrous force of nature, these five British ladies ar e unstoppable, and after they hit, you won't be able ignore them. People who were once oblivious to the phrase "zigazig-ah" will soon accept that it has something to do with slamming your body down and winding it all around. The heretofore unknown questio n of "who is the best Spice Girl?" will become a subject of national debate. The sound of modern pop music may not be forever altered, but the faces attached to it will. Laugh this off as a paranoid delusion if you will, but it is already happening, wheth er you know it or not. As you read this, the Spice Girls have already taken over the charts in the UK, Japan and half of Europe to boot. So, just who the hell are these girls, and what do they want? Here's a little history.

Just to assign some random numbers, Spice Girl number one is Geri Halliwell. The oldest of the group, she is known most often as the red-headed or ginger one. Usually the preferred choice in "favorite Spice Girl" talks, she has the dubious distinction of having posed in rubber for a British fetish magazine. Number two is Mel B., or Melanie Brown, the one with the wild teased-out afro and hyperactive personality. She is also the only one with a decent voice in the group and, as such, she drives most of the ir songs, including the odd little raps that always seem to pop up in their midst. Next up is Mel C., Melanie Chisholm, who unfortunately usually comes up last in popularity contests among the girls. This is probably because she is the athletic one who is always wearing some type of gym clothes and doing backflips without being asked. The fact that she could probably knock them all flat is enough to scare the guys off. Numbers four and five are Victoria Aadams and Emma Bunton, the "baby" Spice Girl and th e mature one, respectively.

The Spice Girls appeared out of nowhere onto the British music scene in 1996. By all appearances, they are the epitome of a corporate-manufactured pop group. In fact they originally brought together by the same type of people who created the New Kids on t he Block. Due to a falling-out they struck out on their own and managed to capture the attention of a nation. Of course, in England there's a tradition of "boy bands"-groups akin to the New Kids like Take That and East 17 that are designed to appeal to th e strong market of teenage girls. The Spice Girls created a female counterpart to those groups and in doing so opened up a new market the boy bands couldn't reach: the male market.

And we're not talking about just teenage males. One look at these five fit and sprightly women will tell you where their appeal will lie for your average male, adolescent or otherwise. Girl fans eat it up also because they see five distinctly different, s uccessful women who go around spouting life-affirming, bubblegum-happy lines and just make it cool to be a girl. Some of the slogans you can find splashed around their cd: "It's a girl's world - She who dares wins - It's a girl thang - Future is female - Can you handle a Spice Girl?"

Yes, the Spice Girls have gone to great lengths to be sure that everybody likes them, and even the media haven't had the courage to fight the hype. Even within the normally pop-unfriendly arena of the rock 'n' roll press, the critics have been won over, c alling the group "irresistible" and "invincible."

"High Street Glamour, cartoon feminism and shouting. That's what we call a pop group," read British music paper Melody Maker, a publication that usually avoids the mention of pop groups at all. But you just can't argue. Sure, you can laugh when you watch the video for "Wannabe" on MTV (and lord knows, if you haven't seen it yet you must be in hiding). After you hear it five or six times, you'll catch yourself singing it when you're off guard. You may not be happy about it, but you won't be able to make it go away.

That's just the way it is with these girls. Their songs are far from musically advanced, and actually do sound like the New Kids as girls. They're like En Vogue without any real conviction or vocal talent. Any one of the tracks on their debut could easily be a cover of an old unknown Donna Summer or Diana Ross and the Supremes tune. But that doesn't change a thing. You hear them. You see them. They stick in your head. The pictures and sounds are reinforced by heavy rotation on MTV and the radio (someone t old me that the single "Wannabe" was recently played on four LA radio stations at the same time ). And the hype is happening right here, stateside, and it has been for weeks even though the album wasn't released until Tuesday.

Now, you can pretend this is all just big talk from a little paper and try not to think about the Spice Girls and get on with your life, but you'll end up like Dorothy and Toto in Kansas. You'll think you're safe, and pretend you don't know what's going on outside, but that twister is going to snatch you up anyway. It's going to slam your body down and wind it all around and teach you what it means to "zigazig-ah," whether you like it or not. A final bit of wisdom from the girls themselves? "Silence is g olden but shouting is fun." Now, who's going to argue with that?